Thompson Thrift identifies six projects across five states, including a first in Montana

Thompson Thrift has identified the six projects behind its ninth multi-project development partnership, spread across Colorado, Kentucky, Arizona, Nevada and Montana, and one of them would be the Indianapolis firm's first multifamily development in Montana. The Sept. 24 vehicle, Thompson Thrift 2027 Multifamily Development, LP, is targeting approximately $200 million to $230 million in total capital commitments to build class A apartment communities, according to Multifamily Dive.

JR Plyler, the firm's chief investment officer, describes the launch as an annual habit. "It's become somewhat of a habit at this point and muscle memory," he told Multifamily Dive. "Every year we come out with our flagship series. And now's the time when we announce our deals, and that's what we're doing." That habit matters because apartment developers have spent the past couple of years saying institutional equity is their biggest hurdle to starting projects on a deal-by-deal basis, and a standing vehicle turns that negotiation into a commitment that can be sized well before a site goes under contract.

"I think in this landscape, it's a pretty obvious competitive advantage from a capital perspective," Plyler said, with the qualifier repeat capital always carries: "Nonetheless, we still have to go and execute and prove that we're worthy of continued investment with our investors." The ninth partnership repeats the shape of the eight before it: investors commit against a slate of identified projects rather than to a single asset, which suggests the firm can sequence starts without repricing equity for each one. The announcement leaves undisclosed which of the six sites sits in which state, along with unit counts and projected costs.

Plyler's market call is that the construction wave has run longer than many observers expected but is starting to slow in many markets, while households marry later and rent longer, which he expects to produce a strong rental recovery even if concessions stay in place. "Even though concessions may hang around, we see top line rents starting to stop their retreat," he said.

The filter that produced the six sites shows up most clearly in Montana, where Plyler describes strong occupancies, low unemployment, and among the highest single-family home prices in the country—an own-versus-rent setup institutions tend to skip when they screen on market size alone. "It's an emerging market, but it's also one of the markets that has one of the highest home prices from a single-family perspective, nationally, which is just kind of ripe for that own-versus-rent dichotomy," he said. "All that put together is the type of a market that we look for that may be overlooked because of just pure market size."

Colorado plays the opposite role, the known quantity from which the Western push extends: Plyler called the firm's presence and history in the state massive and described using Colorado as a launch into other Western markets as a natural extension of what Thompson Thrift already does on the Front Range.

Our coverage this year has tracked the series through two stories: August described a named 2026 fund wagering on a 2027 lease-up, Avira at Silver Comet Trail, 319 units in Powder Springs, Georgia, where construction is underway and move-ins are scheduled for October 2027, a two-year wager on suburban Atlanta absorption. When the ninth vehicle was announced in late September, we noted that naming six projects up front narrows selection risk for the fund but puts all six into the same delivery window.

The build-over-buy trade runs through the same terrain: with construction starts hard to finance, the sponsors still breaking ground are the ones holding a standing equity source, and the thinness of new supply is what their pro formas count on, while projects that cannot clear the equity check widen the supply gap rather than close it. Nine partnerships is one measure of clearing that check, though what the firm announced is a launch rather than a closed fund, and the Montana entry depends on capital it is still gathering.

The announcement names six sites, not six groundbreakings, and Plyler set the test himself in the interview: the firm has to execute and prove it deserves continued investment, which the 2027 vehicle's delivery calendar will grade before the next annual announcement arrives.